


Animal XING

by msmami



Category: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (Video Game), どうぶつの森 | Animal Crossing Series
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Existentialism, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7778074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmami/pseuds/msmami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The villagers look back on what they presume to be a past life among their peers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Animal XING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While in the midst of her newest novel, Molly begins to contemplate what exactly led her where she is today with the help of friends.

It took at least five cups of coffee to wake up Molly in the morning. She could go out to the café out in the city, but Brewster’s was always too crowded. She preferred making the stuff herself with her own old kettle and milk and whatever decorative cup wasn’t in her kitchen sink. She stared longingly at her unlit stove, a spice rack and arrangement of pots looming overhead, not yet to be put to any use. No, she didn’t need breakfast, just coffee.

She’d live off nothing but her signature milky, Blue Mountain coffee for the next few months if she felt like, only reaching for a granola bar if she was really that hungry. Even then, none of this unsolicited dieting had done a thing about the pudge in her belly.

She sometimes wondered what it be like to be born an ostrich-tall, lean, and beautiful like Blanche who owned that tea house a little down the road. Molly, a duck, was considered merely “cute” by the masses which didn’t fare well on dating sites where every potential suitor was puzzled by the bold twenty-one written next to her age. Yes, she could legally drink wine on an island shore. Yes, she could buy erotica at a local bookstore. Yes, she would like to settle down and rest on a fresh batch of eggs for a bit. Yes, she hadn’t dated since high school and probably should have stayed in college.

As Molly cautiously carried her steaming cup across the carpet, her cellphone rang. She placed her cup down and checked the screen to see Mint’s smiling face gracing the front.

The teal squirrel had settled for running a handmade ice cream parlor from her apartment and it was particularly busy during the warmer months. With only her behind the counter, Molly would have thought she’d grow overwhelmed but has yet to see the woman approaching her early forties crack under the pressure once.

Molly slid her phone open and chimed her sweetest, “Hello, quackidee?”

“Molly, you actually answered! I’m sorry, are you busy?”

“No, I was just going to run some errands, but I have time to talk.”

“Oh,” Mint hesitated for a moment and Molly heard the faint sound of shuffling papers in the background. “Uh, yes I just wanted to check up on you. I was wondering if I could drop by for a minute, I think I left my book in your living room.”

“That old copy of _Mermaid Fantasia_? You know, I could give you a better copy. I have plenty of them lying around.”

“No, ahhhhhh! That was the first official copy you let me have and there’s no way I’m losing it! Yes, it’s a little stained and dog-eared, but it’s practically a classic.”

“A book published two years ago isn’t a classic,” Molly said, looking at said book she placed safely on her table by the front door. “But, yeah, you can drop by whenever you want.”

The sound of more shuffling papers before Mint changed the subject, “Oh, Goldie tells me you’re working on a book? Care to tell me about it?”

“I don’t know,” Molly said, beak pursing into a pout. “When I told you the ending to Mermaid Fantasia Volume Two you blurted it out to anyone in earshot.”

“That was juicy stuff, ahhhhhh! I didn’t know Cassandra was the reincarnation of the long lost mermaid queen. I had to tell someone.”

“Multiple someone’s, quackidee…”

“Look, I promise I won’t tell anyone about this. I’m just curious.”

“Well, it’s nothing too crazy since I already talked to Goldie,” Molly murmured. “I’m just sort of felt like when I finished up the mermaid books I could step into a new genre. I’m thinking existential horror.”

“You doing horror? You can barely listen to K.K Dirge with the lights off.”

“It’s not that kind of in your face horror,” Molly retorted. “It’s a…private kind of thing. Like, things that personally scare me.”

“What personally scares you?” Mint said and Molly can faintly make out the trill of a blue question mark forming over the squirrel’s head.

Molly hesitated for a second. She hadn’t spoken about her plans to the new book to many other townsfolk, but it was the creeping sensation of terror and the inkling of a mysterious force behind her existence that she really couldn’t explain. She hadn’t given the full story to the wide-eyed and idealistic Goldie who would just hush her up with a cup of tea and some musing by the fire place. Molly didn’t know any therapists she could contact. And going to that fortune teller across the street just seemed like adding salt to the wound. Eerie mysticism couldn’t be cured by whatever eerie mysticism Katrina had to offer for five hundred bells a complaint.

Choosing her words carefully, Molly said, “Do you ever feel you’re forgetting something very important? Like there’s a very specific memory or even a huge chunk of your life you should be remembering but you just can’t?”

“Sometimes I forget to take off my face mask in the morning,” Mint said.

“No, beyond that. This isn’t like leaving the stove on or something, I mean like there’s a certain event you should have a crystal clear memory of, but it’s like your mind is actively fighting against it. As if there’s this whole life, a whole existence you used to have but can no longer recall. Like, maybe in the past, you were someone different. You played by someone else’s rules, things were just easier for you somehow because you didn’t ever have to try.”

Mint fell silent for a minute before answering, “…What an eerie concept. I suppose I understand where you’re coming from. Peculiar…”

“So you understand?”

“I understand that maybe there’s another version of me that has a much easier life than I do, ahhhhhh. Like, sometimes I get winded just when I want to shake a tree for some new furniture or something. And, sometimes I wonder why furniture even grows on trees to begin with.”

“Do you ever feel like someone else used to be taking care of you? Be your authority figure of some sort? Someone who gave you structure and guidance out of sheer kindness?”

“Actually yes,” Mint said.

At this, Molly began to chuckle. Softly at first until she broke into a full on fit of laughter, vibrant lines of yellow popping up around the air near her head. She hadn’t laughed this hard in some time.

“Wh-Why are you laughing?” Mint said, fighting back a chuckle herself.

Molly shook her head as if Mint could see her through the receiver, “No, I’m just, relieved I’m not the only one who feels this way, quackidee.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about anything else?”

“No, thank you, Mint. See you soon.” Molly pressed her feather against the end call button and set her phone aside on her desk. Molly was always a flexible duckling; though certain things just didn’t sit right with her. Certain things kept her awake past midnight, staring absently at the ceiling fan, hoping it’s hypnotic twirl would lull her racing mind to sleep. Certain things made it hard for her to answer Goldie’s phone calls.

Molly didn’t have many friends and the golden retriever now lived a quiet life as a librarian somewhere off in the woods, having retired from her own escapades as a writer about a decade ago. It was a few blocks and a bridge away from Molly’s cottage and the aging dog seemed to always know when she was coming.

Certain things wouldn’t sit right with her publisher who wanted the final installment of her fantasy-romance-adventure mermaid series to be on shelves by the holiday season. As far as her calendar was concerned, it be some time until the image above would transition to picturesque beaches to smiling families made out of snow. She’d tried to have her transcript done and sent for editing by the end of June and the final copy ready by September. She’d need to forbidding atmosphere of the fall season to fuel of her horror writing muse.

Despite her devotion to the mermaid saga for three years, she had grown bored with the idea within the past few months. Whitney promised there would be a big screen adaption sometime next spring and Molly would only agree because she needed the extra money. She couldn’t see her experimental horror novel granting the same level of success. It was the magic and mystery that made Molly the writer she is today, and even then she only spent her money on more books and backup computers.

But she just couldn’t settle, she couldn’t let mermaids be her end all for her career. She had other stories to tell, tales so macabre that maybe only a handful would be handle to absurd level of surrealism and psychological dread she had instore. She would just write she was thinking; it would be like a dream diary of sorts.

It would be a place for her to catalogue all her fears and doubts about her existence and she had no problem with the rest of the world seeing it. Maybe they wouldn’t like it. Maybe it wouldn’t get a blockbuster franchise. Maybe, but Molly didn’t really care.

She did know Goldie would like it, though. Goldie liked everything, and Mint liked just enough things.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a growing collection of short stories about the lives of the villagers from Animal Crossing transitioning into more independent lifestyles as of Happy Home Designer with some level of self awareness about it.
> 
> I’ve always liked how the house requests give the otherwise interchangeable characters specific traits and interests and I’ve decided to expand on some of my favorites.


End file.
